Public Spaces in the Philippines

Ateneo de Manila University Archīum Ateneo Philosophy Department Faculty Publications Philosophy Department 10-2019 Making Sense of the City: Public Spaces in the Philippines Remmon E. Barbaza Follow this and additional works at: https://archium.ateneo.edu/philo-faculty-pubs Part of the Philosophy Commons Making Sense of the City Making Sense of the City REMMON E. BARBAZA Editor Ateneo de Manila University Press Ateneo de Manila University Press Bellarmine Hall, ADMU Campus Contents Loyola Heights, Katipunan Avenue Quezon City, Philippines Tel.: (632) 426-59-84 / Fax (632) 426-59-09 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ateneopress.org © 2019 by Ateneo de Manila University and Remmon E. Barbaza Copyright for each essay remains with the individual authors. Preface vii Cover design by Jan-Daniel S. Belmonte Remmon E. Barbaza Cover photograph by Remmon E. Barbaza Book design by Paolo Tiausas Great Transformations 1 The Political Economy of City-Building Megaprojects All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, in the Manila Peri-urban Periphery stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or Jerik Cruz otherwise, without the written permission of the Publisher. Struggling for Public Spaces 41 The Political Significance of Manila’s The National Library of the Philippines CIP Data Segregated Urban Landscape Recommended entry: Lukas Kaelin Making sense of the city : public spaces in the Philippines / Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers 69 Remmon E. Barbaza, editor. -- Quezon City : Ateneo de Manila University Press, [2019], c2019. Fernando N. Zialcita pages ; cm Cleaning the Capital 95 ISBN 978-971-550-911-4 The Campaign against Cabarets and Cockpits in the Prewar Greater Manila Area 1. Urbanization -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 2. Cities and Michael D. Pante towns -- Growth -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 3. City planning -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 4. Sociology, Urban -- Philippines -- Eudaimonia in the Margins 121 Metro Manila. 5. Philippine essays (English) I. Barbaza, Remmon E. Negotiating Ways to Flourish in Urban Slum Dwellings 307.764 HT384.P5 P920190071 Marc Oliver D. Pasco REMMON E. BARBAZA Preface Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila 145 Gary C. Devilles Sex(edness) in the City 181 Reimagining Our Urban Spaces with Abraham Akkerman Duane Allyson U. Gravador-Pancho The City and the Dynamism of Invention IN 2015, SOME OF THE MEMBERS of the Department of and Exploitation 193 Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University initiated several Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez round-table discussions on the city, later inviting colleagues from other departments, such as English, Filipino, History, Sociology The City as Illusion and Promise 213 and Anthropology, and Economics to join the conversations. The Remmon E. Barbaza discussions were enlightening, and became an opportunity for us to challenge our own understanding of the city, widening our About the Authors 227 perspectives and allowing us to expand the scope of our inquiries even as each of us remained within our own disciplinal assump- Index 230 tions and trajectories. The collection of essays in this book is the result of these exchanges. While the range of questions and research methods varied significantly, from the more concrete and empirical, to the more abstract and speculative, one senses that the essays do have shared concerns, and that they all struggle to make sense of the same phenomenon—namely, the city, and Metro Manila in particular. From the nine essays in this anthology, three themes even- tually emerged, thus forming the sections of this book. In Part I: Contesting Spaces, our first three essays discuss the ways by which the city becomes the site of struggle for the allocation and ordering of spaces. In “Great Transformations: The Spatial Politics of City- building Megaprojects in the Manila Peri-urban Periphery,” Jerik Cruz examines “transformations in the geographies of governance vii viii Preface REMMON E. BARBAZA ix that have been catalyzed by . mega-projects,” showing how such Here the abstract universal, that is the city, becomes embodied undertakings bring about the “formation of new constellations space. The plaza can be the spine that keeps the city together as it of power, territory and governance processes, creating a special moves forward.” window for probing the dynamics of urban spatial production within In Part II: Sensing Through the Margins, our next three essays developing countries like the Philippines.” How such new constella- explore the city from below and from the fringes. In “Cleaning tions develop further, especially in relation to political power, “will the Capital: The Campaign against Cabarets and Cockpits in the prove to be of historic importance not just to the maneuverings of Prewar Greater Manila Area,” Michael D. Pante examines the state and capital in neoliberalized contexts, but to the prospects “complexity of urban border areas and fringe belts in capital cities,” of still-struggling, still-evolving movements of non-elite forces to focusing on the “simultaneous porosity and rigidity of the borders” claim universal and democratic rights to the city.” of Manila and Quezon City with respect to two popular entertain- Having lived in Quezon City for a couple of years while teaching ment activities that were often seen and indeed, continue to be philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University, Lukas Kaelin (now seen as belonging to the fringes of the city, namely, cabarets and with the Catholic Private University Linz in Austria) had concrete, cockfighting. As Pante hopes to show, shifting the study from the personal experience as a basis for his reflections in “Struggling for center to the fringes of the city allows us to “substantially unpack Public Spaces: The Political Significance of Manila’s Segregated the socio-spatial complexity of vices in the greater Manila area.” Urban Landscape.” Kaelin is concerned with “the political signif- Aristotle is known to have found the ultimate end of all our icance of the urban landscape of Manila,” inquiring into “how actions, inquiries, and technical preoccupations, namely, eudai- the notion of the ‘public’ plays out with respect to the polarity of monia (usually translated as “happiness” or “well-being). Unlike, private and public.” For Kaelin, there is no doubt that the frag- however, his former teacher and friend, Plato, Aristotle did not mentation fundamentally underlying the megacity that is Metro dwell on some eternal and unchanging idea or form, such as in Manila can only be overcome through the people’s willful creation the case of happiness, but rather sought to understand it within of public spaces, and in so doing also resist dictatorial and corrupt the context of the practical realities of human existence. Thus, governments. Aristotle could not avoid the question whether there are certain Guided by Hegelian dialectics, Fernando N. Zialcita concludes material conditions that are necessary for us to achieve happi- the first part with a consideration of the plaza as the historic ness. Marc Oliver D. Pasco brings this problem to bear in his core of towns and cities, serving as spaces that shape “municipal essay, “Eudaimonia in the Margins: Negotiating Ways to Flourish identity.” In “Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers,” Zialcita decries in Urban Slum Dwellings.” Pasco asks, “Is it possible for people the loss of this central and fundamental function of the plaza: “It who are economically and socially marginalized to attain happi- is here that local history, social solidarity, unique customs and ness?” Refusing to offer any easy answer, Pasco instead decides to expressions of creativity come together to form a sense of place.” engage the Aristotelian question by employing Pierre Bourdieu’s One can easily see indeed that in most, if not all, towns and cities concept of habitus in examining concrete possibilities of well-being in the Philippines, the building of shopping malls near, if not in among the urban poor. Pasco concludes that “Happiness, from the place of, the historic plazas is viewed as an indication of progress, perspective of the habitus, is not an explicit goal which calls for the rather than as a threat to the local people’s history and identity. conscious application of practical wisdom in various situations. It True to his Hegelian roots, Zialcita does not see the problem as an is the function of an agent’s excellence in improvising strategies either-or situation, for “the plaza complex can combine together that cohere with objective necessity. Viewed in this manner, it history and business, creativity and livelihood. It becomes a sacred can therefore be said that, indeed, the poor can be happy. Just not space that concretizes the various things that make a city unique. always in the way we would imagine or wish them to be.” x Preface REMMON E. BARBAZA xi In “Sensing and Seeing Manila,” Gary C. Devilles reflects, invention on the one hand and exploitation on the other, Agustin through the sense of seeing, “the politics of Manila’s representa- Martin G. Rodriguez, in his essay “The City and the Dynamism of tion and depiction, the asymmetrical relations of its people, and Invention and Exploitation,” seeks to find a way out of the imbal- the creative strategies employed by people under an oppressive ance, as the dominant rationality entrenches itself in a system surveillance culture.” Devilles undertakes such reflection using that marginalizes other rationalities. Rodriguez is convinced that two Filipino indie films (Serbis and Tribu), and a novel (Edgardo “it is truly incumbent upon the margins, to the others who are M. Reyes’s Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag), which was later turned into a not completely of this web of global urbanity, to break open the Lino Brocka movie (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag). For Devilles, logic of the urban for it to accept the possibilities of other ways of seeing Manila means “understanding contradictions and problem- dw e l li n g .” atic relations and .

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